The following is the response that Al Garrett made to Lt O'Keeffe's pictures of things that he had accumulated while in Battery A:
Mike - This is mostly for you. I received your mailed items this morning. I will send Frank's off to him. The item at the bottom, just to the right of the arrowhead is without a doubt an Initiator Shorting Plug from the HAWK that you fired. It was customary for the TCO to receive it, kill or no kill. While I was in Korea we fired two HAWKs every Friday afternoon from mid-August to mid-December. I noticed a lot of officers arguing about who should get the shorting plug. So I placed an urgent order through the supply system (unit of issue was one box). I received one box with 60 of the little bastards in it.
A Korean Battalion from down around Pusan, Massan and Chin-Hae came to fire, two batteries at a time. The President of Korea came to watch, along with his Chief of Staff and two Deputy Chiefs of Staff. I could never tell one from the other, they all looked the same to me. But they all left the range with their own souvenir Initiator Shorting Plug. I guess they thought the missile had several on board. I bought more favors with those little buggers.
The Marksman Badge with the Missile "Ladder" is good for a story. When I was at the Combat Developments Command, Air Defense Agency at Fort Bliss, as an SFC E-7, it was decided that there should be a test exclusively for HAWK Maintenance Warrant Officers. A panel of Field Grade Officers was assembled, but not one of them knew anything about the Launcher business. So I was tasked to serve on that panel and help write the test. As I recall there were 150 questions, and I had written about 20 of them. When we were finished and before anybody took the test, Orders were published declaring all of us "Missile Experts" and we were authorized to hang the "Missile" ladder from an "Expert" qualification badge.
Therefore, I became the only enlisted man in the US Army to be authorized to wear that badge. It was awarded to me as "Constructive Credit" since it was assumed I, as part of the team that wrote the test, would easily pass it, if not max it. I had to explain this story to literally dozens of Officers and Warrant Officers throughout my career. Al
